The US has huge interests in Hong Kong. In 1992, a few years before China resumed its sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the US adopted the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992. The keynote of the Act is to enhance the cooperation with and maintain the treatment to Hong Kong. This tune has changed in the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which is obviously the response of the US to widespread protests in Hong Kong arising from the Extradition Bill proposed by the Government of Hong Kong SAR. The new law includes several negative elements. It marks a change in the US policy towards Hong Kong and furthermore represents a change in the US policy towards China. The new law should not merely be understood as the US’s support for democracy and human rights in Hong Kong. Instead, it should be considered as a major leverage which the US may maneuver to engage a rising China.

New national security (NNS) represents a twenty-first century’s sociological paradigm on which the law is based on and is characterized by multiple actors, wide covering, low predictability, subjective perception, dual nature, and rampant diffusion. The emergence and expansion of the NNS prompts a highly advanced perspective to the rule of law at both the national and international levels, specifically, the relationship between international and domestic law. In this context, traditional approaches, ‘international approach’ or ‘national approach,’ are insufficient, so that a new ‘managerial approach’ is thus needed. The legal practice in relation to national security of China, a rising great power, attracts close attention in the international society. Furthermore, since Chinese conception of national security has its own ‘Chinese characteristics,’ how China will enforce its national security law in the context of international law remains to be seen. The NNS will lead profound sociological transformation upon which all legal orders are based.

The multilateralization of international investment law has witnessed repeated disappointments over the past six decades. Current negotiations regarding the Investment Chapter within the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement may bring about a new promise for this process. It is necessary for the TPP negotiating parties to have a proper understanding of this recent history. Circumstances under which the TPP negotiations are conducted are quite different from those of the past. Thus, it can be assumed that TPP negotiations will be concluded successfully and may have profound implications on the multilateralization of international investment law. Since TPP negotiations have multilateral consequences, several new initiatives have been proposed amongst the TPP negotiating parties, which may help alleviate the ‘legitimacy crisis’ of the past two decades. These initiatives include a new principle of Special and Differential treatment, operative provisions on investment promotion, a Side Agreement on code of conduct of transnational corporations, and an appellate mechanism for reviewing arbitral awards.

The conditionality of human rights is a very provoking issue in international economic relations. It should be applied under the guidelines of legitimacy, legality, credibility, and proportionality. The EU is enthusiastic about human rights conditionality. However, it is hard to say that the EU’s program of human rights conditionality has worked well in practice. Some main multilateral economic institutions, which had been criticized for disregarding human rights concerns, have remained shy to human rights conditionality. As an increasingly emerging economic giant, China will be expected to have some sort of obligation to better respect, better protect and better promote international human rights. China can accept human rights conditionality in a moderate way.